Property in recyclable artificial implants

This article discusses property rights in recyclable artificial implants such as pacemakers. These implants can remain useful and valuable after the death of the first user, but it is not clear who owns the devices when they are removed. The article explains how property rights are transferred consensually and by the operation of law. It then applies these principles to the problem of recyclable implants and argues that the central question is whether the device in any given case accedes to its host human body. If it does not, then on removal the device is owned by the same person who owned it when it was first implanted: this may be the first user or their estate, or a hospital, or even a manufacturer. On the other hand, if the device does accede to the host body, then it ceases to exist as an independent object. The thing into which it has merged, a living human body, cannot be the subject of property rights. This means that any earlier rights in the implant are lost, and would not revive on removal. Instead, new property rights may attach to an explanted device.